Financial Independence Year One

[tieresias]

Reporting Period: 1st April 2017 to 31st March 2018
Age at start: 55
(FA = Financial Activity, something related to finances that I did beyond transferring cash between accounts and regular monthly records of valuations, income and expenditure.)

April:
FA: Transfer and invest new money in ISA and Stakeholder Pension
European roadtrip in six year old Ford Fiesta
France (learned of snap General Election on the ferry)
Belgium (visit daughter who is studying there)
Netherlands (visit friends from when I worked there)
Germany
Poland
Lithuania

May:
Belarus (without the car, taking advantage of the recently introduced visa on arrival by air)
Latvia (visit two Latvian friends)
Estonia
Finland (without the car, visiting two friends)
Estonia. (Having been through the eastern side of the Baltic states going up, the return journey follows the coast of the Baltic Sea as far as possible.)
Latvia (Visit the one friend who is in-country)
Lithuania

June:
Poland
Germany
Netherlands (See one old friend again)
Belgium (See daughter again)
France
UK, with just hours to spare to vote in General Election
Do some travel planning
Kazakhstan (plan to meet old school friend, but sadly his wife's dad died so he couldn't make it)

July:
Kyrgyzstan
Uzbekistan
Turkmenistan
Guinea pig sitting for niece and so my brother and his family can go on holiday for a couple of weeks without needing to worry about mom

August:
Dog/cat sitting for ex-mother-in-law
Rabbit sitting for son and his fiancée

September:
Travel planning
FA: Amec Foster Wheeler is about to be taken over. I sell in the market in advance of the takeover, crystallising a capital loss.
FA: Get valuation of deferred DB pension and quote for taking it now. Decide to do nothing.

October:
Poland, incl. Auschwitz, with friend
Mexico

November:
Belize
Guatemala, including three weeks of Spanish tuition

December:
Honduras
El Salvador
Nicaragua
Costa Rica

January:
Panama
Curacao
Suriname (meet a friend)
Guyana
Trinidad

February:
Colombia, including another two weeks of Spanish classes.
Ecuador
Peru

March:
Bolivia
FA: Start figuring out what to sell to utilise CGT Allowance whilst sitting on a realised capital loss

Financial Performance
Capital: -2.7%*
Income: Towards the top of Basic Rate Taxpayer**
Expenditure: Well within budget***


Highlights
Spanish tuition in Antigua, Guatemala
Bolivian Salt Flats
Peru
Mayan and similar ruins at Palenque, Chichen Itsa, Tulum, Tikal,…
Antwerp
Baltic states’ capitals
Making a fair number of new and interesting friends and acquaintances
Kind of everything really, except for a bit of a bad experience in Guyana and even that is all part of the experience in retrospect

* Excluding value of my house and pension assets

** Somewhat higher than expected due to an investment trust (ELTA) deciding to pay a load of special dividends instead of doing a return of capital, resulting in a loss of value which I decided to realise as a capital loss in my overall calculations for the final year.

*** In my planning for FIRE, I allowed a budget to overspend my income by a certain amount for the first ten years. I used about 40% of that amount. If not for the special dividends**, I would have used 80%. The expenditure figure includes payment of voluntary NI and anticipated payment of Income Tax for that year.

[Dod101]

You leave me breathless. When did you actually live?

Dod

[JohnB]

I found when doing a 6 month trip overland from Mexico City to Rio that you can do exotic travel cheaper than staying at home, if you avoid lots of flights back and forth. Oh, I'm in Quito, I might as well go the Galapagos....

[tieresias]

You leave me breathless. When did you actually live?

Dod

High altitude in Peru and Bolivia, typically 3,000-4,000m above sea level, quite literally left me breathless!

But what do you mean about actually living?

[Dod101]

What I meant was you have been in virtual perpetual motion but where do you call home? By your references to finances, the UK? Good for you.

Dod

[tieresias]

I found when doing a 6 month trip overland from Mexico City to Rio that you can do exotic travel cheaper than staying at home, if you avoid lots of flights back and forth. Oh, I'm in Quito, I might as well go the Galapagos....

I calculated cost per day for each of the trips and also when I was at home. Staying at home is definitely cheaper, but I have no accommodation costs and rarely eat out. But I take your point and once you are "out there" living can be cheap.

[tieresias]

What I meant was you have been in virtual perpetual motion but where do you call home? By your references to finances, the UK? Good for you.

I have a house in England that my son says I treat like a base, not a home I bought it a few years ago, while I was living and working in the Middle East, and he and his fiancee live in it and pay the bills. It's an arrangement that suits us all and the house is conveniently located for the rest of my family (except the daughter in Belgium!), so I see much more of them nowadays than I have done for years.

Currently planning a trip to North and East Asia. Mongolian visa was issued yesterday and I'm hoping to get the one for China by the end of the week. A travel agent in China has the one for North Korea...

[Longtermyieldman]

How did you avoid blowing the budget on travel costs? A lot of nights away from home, and a lot of flights...

[Quint]

This is a pretty impressive first year. We are three months in to our first year and thought we were doing well but you make us look like we have barely left the house.

I will have to do a summary at the end of our first year.

How did you get on to the Spanish tuition overseas. Learning more Spanish is on my list as is doing some central and south America, but we are doing Singapore and New Zealand as our first big trip next February.

[tieresias]

How did you avoid blowing the budget on travel costs? A lot of nights away from home, and a lot of flights...

I fly economy, stay in reasonable budget hotels or AirBnBs, I travel sometimes with budget tour operators like Intrepid or G-Adventures, I eat in local places but not 5 star restaurants (or, if I have facilities, cook for myself)... I'm well above hitch-hiking backpacker status but far below luxury and I'm comfortable with that.

Even including the "subsidy" from my ten year "splurge pot", the total cost of that year was more or less exactly the threshold for Higher Rate Income Tax.

[tieresias]

This is a pretty impressive first year. We are three months in to our first year and thought we were doing well but you make us look like we have barely left the house.

I will have to do a summary at the end of our first year.

How did you get on to the Spanish tuition overseas. Learning more Spanish is on my list as is doing some central and south America, but we are doing Singapore and New Zealand as our first big trip next February.

Thanks Quint!

The first school I went to was Antigüeña Spanish Academy in Antigua, Guatemala.
http://www.spanishacademyantiguena.com

It was very good value for money I thought:
- USD100 per week for 4 hours of one-to-one tuition, 5 days a week (8am to noon with a half hour break) plus free activities in the weekday afternoons
- USD85 per week for a private room in a "homestay" with a bathroom shared with two others and three meals a day, six days a week, in an easy walking distance of the "city" centre, the school office and the "garden" where the lessons were given.
(Other packages are possible.)

Antigua, a former capital before it was destroyed by earthquakes a couple of times, is a lovely little colonial city of only about 40,000 residents, but because it gets a lot of tourists and students, there are plenty of bars, restaurants, etc. as well as historic buildings, including a ruined cathedral where a Tarzan filmed was filmed in about 1930. We could see a live volcano from the garden of the homestay! The "homestay" was fairly basic, but fine. I wasn't actually in the host's house - we were in a separate building in the garden with three bedrooms (me, a Qatari and a Norwegian who kept complaining about the cold!) and, at any one time, 2-4 others staying in a similar structure and one in the house itself with private bathroom. The meals were fairly basic, with lots of scrambled eggs and beans (and my "motions" have never been better before or since!), but there is always the option to eat out if you like. There are also lots of salsa lessons, often free on different nights of the week.

I thoroughly recommend that one. The Guatemalan accent is said to be quite neutral and widely understood across Latin America.

The school in Medellin, Colombia, was: http://www.nuevalengua.com

This was rather more expensive:
- USD 175 per week for 5x4 hours of small group tuition with limited afternoon activities, largely at own cost, plus a USD 40 registration fee
- USD 250 per week for private room with shared bathroom and two (dreadful!) meals seven days a week and another USD 40 registration fee.

Medellin (Medejin as they pronounce it) is quite a hilly city and my "homestay" was a 15 minute down 20 minute up walk away from the school, which was itself the same walking distance and steepness from the main tourist area. The city itself is huge. The homestay was the home of "granny", who was away at the time, so the only person there was her maid who was a terrible cook and hardly ever there. Otherwise, "grandson" popped round from time to time and, when I moaned about the food, he got his mom to cook something for me. Some people were in homestays so far away that they came by taxi. A couple of young Dutch women who were in my homestay decided to move into accommodation at the school itself and discovered they had been put into a mixed dorm.

The tuition was pretty good (there are pros and cons of one-to-one vs group). Our teacher had us outside in the park for the first hour each day, throwing a couple of balls to each other with one ball, say, counting one to twenty and the second ball, say, going through the months of the year. But the accommodation arrangements left a lot to be desired, so try to get that issue resolved in advance. And the Medellin accent is quite harsh!

HTH

[langley59]

I am in my first year of FIRE and one of my objectives has been to improve my foreign language skills. By way of background I have 'A' levels in French/Spanish/German but that was 40 years ago and since then I have had limited opportunity to use the languages. My French has always been much better than my Spanish, which in turn has always been much better than my German, no doubt on account of my practical experience with those languages. In my youth I spent summers living with a French family totally immersed in the language which has benefited me a good deal. I have used my Spanish as much as I can on Spanish holidays over the years. I only ever went to Germany once.

I struggled with trying to figure out how to move on from 'A' level standard to fluency until I read something which suggested that you just need to read and not keep looking things up (as a native speaking child would do). So I recently read an entire modern day novel in French without looking up words, although I had seen the movie in English so knew the story line. I found it highly beneficial. I understood enough of each sentence/paragraph to get the gist even if there were words I did not understand. It makes the task of reading a foreign language much less tiresome than constantly looking up words in a dictionary. So now I am trying the same with Spanish but because I am not so experienced as with French I have a copy of the novel in English and Spanish and I proceed by reading a couple of paragraphs in English so I know what its about and then read the same passages in Spanish, again without referring back to the English. I find this is working for me.

I hope this may be of benefit to others.

[TUK020]

20 years ago, I spent a couple of years living and working in Paris. As part of trying to get my language skills up to speed, I tried a number of things.
Discovered at work that you have to focus on making sure you are getting the understanding right rather than conversing in the right language - fond my self talking English to my close colleagues, and them responding in French - comprehension much easier than speaking, you are not pausing to find the right work the whole time.

Outside of work, what helped was immersion in simple language. Somewhere I still have the complete set of Tintin and Asterix cartoons in French.
Language is simple enough that you can follow the gist of it in real time - visual cues help with understanding the audio.
This accelerates the learning, and also makes it bearable - you are not having to concentrate so hard that you find it a chore. This means that you can keep at it for longer.

For more complex stuff, try watching something in French, but with English subtitles. Good French cop series about corruption in high places called Spiral worth a try, but language is much more complex, lots of slang.

[bluedonkey]

How did you avoid blowing the budget on travel costs? A lot of nights away from home, and a lot of flights...

I fly economy, stay in reasonable budget hotels or AirBnBs, I travel sometimes with budget tour operators like Intrepid or G-Adventures, I eat in local places but not 5 star restaurants (or, if I have facilities, cook for myself)... I'm well above hitch-hiking backpacker status but far below luxury and I'm comfortable with that.

Even including the "subsidy" from my ten year "splurge pot", the total cost of that year was more or less exactly the threshold for Higher Rate Income Tax.

Yes, it's possible to stay economically in a lot of countries around the world without getting down to grunge level. We stayed in a clean hotel with en suite and air con in Cambodia for $25 per night. We only stayed a few nights but if you stay 30 days somewhere the rate comes down, say $20 per night.

[tjh290633]

I have a smattering of several languages, and a reasonable knowledge of three, French studied to School Certificate level, German studied in the sixth form to aim at passing the Qualifying Examination in German for Chemists, and Russian, studied at night school to get the Institute of Linguists basic examination. I forgot to add Latin, when a credit was required for entrance to Oxford.

I had to use my French when we did a trial in a factory where nobody spoke English. Two weeks of deep immersion improved my conversational skills immensely. Subsequently used a lot in technical negotiations. German fell by the wayside somewhat until I had to run a company with a German source of technology. Fortunately I had a native German secretary, who could deal with tricky bits, but conversation improved no end. The Russian came about because I wished to read Russian technical papers, and later was of use when negotiating a contract in Russia. I was the only one who knew any Russian, so it fell to me to make the formal speech at the dinner with our hosts. On later visits social contact with Russians brought conversation on in leaps and bounds. One word of caution. In languages which are gender specific, using the female form is a give away about how you learnt it.

I had a friend who travelled extensively in Eastern Europe, behind the Iron Curtain. He maintained that you needed three phrases in each language:

Bring me something to eat and drink.

I love you, give me a kiss, and

My friend will pay.

He used the last whenever somebody new to the country was in the party for dinner.

Reading the local paper can teach you a lot.

TJH

[Quint]

This is a pretty impressive first year. We are three months in to our first year and thought we were doing well but you make us look like we have barely left the house.

I will have to do a summary at the end of our first year.

How did you get on to the Spanish tuition overseas. Learning more Spanish is on my list as is doing some central and south America, but we are doing Singapore and New Zealand as our first big trip next February.

Thanks Quint!

The first school I went to was Antigüeña Spanish Academy in Antigua, Guatemala.
http://www.spanishacademyantiguena.com

It was very good value for money I thought:
- USD100 per week for 4 hours of one-to-one tuition, 5 days a week (8am to noon with a half hour break) plus free activities in the weekday afternoons
- USD85 per week for a private room in a "homestay" with a bathroom shared with two others and three meals a day, six days a week, in an easy walking distance of the "city" centre, the school office and the "garden" where the lessons were given.
(Other packages are possible.)

Antigua, a former capital before it was destroyed by earthquakes a couple of times, is a lovely little colonial city of only about 40,000 residents, but because it gets a lot of tourists and students, there are plenty of bars, restaurants, etc. as well as historic buildings, including a ruined cathedral where a Tarzan filmed was filmed in about 1930. We could see a live volcano from the garden of the homestay! The "homestay" was fairly basic, but fine. I wasn't actually in the host's house - we were in a separate building in the garden with three bedrooms (me, a Qatari and a Norwegian who kept complaining about the cold!) and, at any one time, 2-4 others staying in a similar structure and one in the house itself with private bathroom. The meals were fairly basic, with lots of scrambled eggs and beans (and my "motions" have never been better before or since!), but there is always the option to eat out if you like. There are also lots of salsa lessons, often free on different nights of the week.

I thoroughly recommend that one. The Guatemalan accent is said to be quite neutral and widely understood across Latin America.

The school in Medellin, Colombia, was: http://www.nuevalengua.com

This was rather more expensive:
- USD 175 per week for 5x4 hours of small group tuition with limited afternoon activities, largely at own cost, plus a USD 40 registration fee
- USD 250 per week for private room with shared bathroom and two (dreadful!) meals seven days a week and another USD 40 registration fee.

Medellin (Medejin as they pronounce it) is quite a hilly city and my "homestay" was a 15 minute down 20 minute up walk away from the school, which was itself the same walking distance and steepness from the main tourist area. The city itself is huge. The homestay was the home of "granny", who was away at the time, so the only person there was her maid who was a terrible cook and hardly ever there. Otherwise, "grandson" popped round from time to time and, when I moaned about the food, he got his mom to cook something for me. Some people were in homestays so far away that they came by taxi. A couple of young Dutch women who were in my homestay decided to move into accommodation at the school itself and discovered they had been put into a mixed dorm.

The tuition was pretty good (there are pros and cons of one-to-one vs group). Our teacher had us outside in the park for the first hour each day, throwing a couple of balls to each other with one ball, say, counting one to twenty and the second ball, say, going through the months of the year. But the accommodation arrangements left a lot to be desired, so try to get that issue resolved in advance. And the Medellin accent is quite harsh!

HTH

All useful information. Thanks for sharing.

[MastG]

The meals were fairly basic, with lots of scrambled eggs and beans (and my "motions" have never been better before or since!), but there is always the option to eat out if you like. There are also lots of salsa lessons, often free on different nights of the week.

I thoroughly recommend that one. The Guatemalan accent is said to be quite neutral and widely understood across Latin America.

When I was with a family stay in Antigua the food was excellent, the whole family ate with the 2 homestay they had and I learnt an awful lot about typico guatamalan food. Unfortunately they did not feed us on Sundays!.

The school impressed differences in other countries use of Spanish and colloquialisms.

Unfortunately in town the alcohol was cheap and I spent most afternoons and evenings drinking, and a hangover is not helpful when trying to lean a new language.

Gary